Productivity through tech, UK firms. More cyber, more cloud, more ERP!

Look at the Danish, chides biz body

Put down those ring-binders, laggards! You need to be magpies. Who moved your cheese...

Low take-up of readily available tech is fuelling Blighty's "deep-seated productivity problems", the club for supposed captains of industry the CBI has said.

The government needs to build an ecosystem that will encourage greater investment and for British businesses to act and make the most of these opportunities, according to the body's report, titled, um, From ostrich to magpie.

The CBI is urging the government to push technologies like the cloud, mobile, e-purchasing and cyber security to reach more businesses by highlighting them in the Industrial Strategy. It is also calling on government to fund local business support where needed.

It reckons this could add over £100bn to the UK economy and support a 5 per cent reduction in income inequality.

Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI director-general, said: "At a time when the public purse is tight, encouraging new technology take-up is one of the most effective routes to raising productivity. With the Government committed to creating a Shared Prosperity Fund using funds previously allocated to EU membership, there are few better priorities than this for where to invest it."

At the CBI annual conference last week, Theresa May challenged industry to invest more in research and development (R&D) to put the country at forefront of new technological developments

Fairbairn said: "It is for the Government to build the ecosystem that will encourage greater investment and for British businesses to act and make the most of these opportunities."

According to the report in 2015, the proportion of UK firms adopting cloud computing was nearly 30 percentage points below Europe's best performers - although it did not cite the source.

It said, the proportion of businesses with e-purchasing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in the UK today is still below levels in Denmark in 2009.

However, anyone who has had to sift through Oracle licensing agreements might disagree on their productivity-enhancing power. ®